The present invention relates to a label peeling device for use with a label issuing machine such as a label printing and applying machine (hereafter called a hand labeler) or a measuring printer, and more particularly relates to a label peeling device which aids in separating a label from its web of backing paper at the location where the backing paper web is reversed for label peeling.
Hand labelers, measuring printers or other label issuing machines may issue labels from a strip of labels adhered to a web of backing paper. Both the label strip and the backing paper web are of flexible paper.
In order to reduce the production cost for the entire label web, however, efforts have been made to use labels and backing paper which are comprised of inexpensive and coarse material and/or of thinner and thus more flexible material. Such labels may be less likely to separate from the backing paper. In order to enable the labels to be more easily peeled from their backing paper, moreover, other attempts have been made to apply a thin and rough layer of a parting agent to that side of the backing paper to which the labels are temporarily adhered. This is to be distinguished from the carefully smoothed, appropriately thick parting agent layer that has previously been required. But, because of the less careful manner of applying a parting agent that is now being tried, the rigidity of the labels themselves have nonuniformly deteriorated. Further, the parting agent soaks into the backing paper, because this paper is coarse, so that the parting agent layer becomes thinner, and still worse, the applied parting agent layer becomes irregular. All of this has caused the labels to frequently fail to be completely peeled from their backing paper web when this backing paper web is turned in the reverse direction at the label peeling unit. Labels which fail to be peeled from their backing paper web not only fail to be issued from the machine but they also stick to the feed passage in the machine for the backing paper and thereby make the machine inoperative or cause problems.
Efforts have been made in the past to lift labels, or the like, off a backing paper web. See U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,912,140; 3,007,919; and 3,169,895. But assured peeling, without resistance to label separation, is not provided by these prior products.